By Yocheved Miriam Russo
THE JERUSALEM POST - Feb. 7, 2007
Fifteen people were indicted as a result of Sharon's
undercover work as a 'Madam' in a whorehouse, but even so, her family was
outraged.
Today, three years after her unpaid eight-month stint
as a brothel proprietor, she still recalls not only the social stigma and
neighborhood harassment but her family's horror as well. "You can take my
picture, but please blur my personal details a little," she says. "I was
a pariah in the neighborhood where I lived. Even though the whorehouse itself
wasn't nearby, when the news got out, my neighbors were angry. They thought
I'd be bringing men home, into my own apartment. That was completely ridiculous,
but I don't want to live through all that again."
Her family was disgusted. "My sister is a social worker,
so I told her what I was doing," she recounts. "I thought she'd be supportive
of my desire to help these women, but when I told her, her face went white.
She refused to listen to another word. Even after all the indictments came
down, it remains a sore subject."
Sharon - not her real name - is 66 years old and looks
more like someone's grandma than a Madam. A graduate of one of the US's most
prestigious Ivy League law schools, she served in the US Department of Justice,
US Attorney's office, under Robert M. Morgenthau. She also holds a Masters
Degree in Tax Law. She made aliya in the late 1970s and is now studying for
another degree, this one in an offshoot of veterinary medicine.
All jokes about lawyers and whores aside, Sharon apparently
excelled in running a house of ill repute in Hadar, the old commercial center
of Haifa. "I loved the job," she admits. "I loved taking care of the girls,
and enjoyed the business. I'm happy to tell the story because so much
misinformation about prostitution exists, especially about the women themselves.
I'd like to see some serious reform, and maybe this will help."
So how does a nice, smart, honorable woman - once married,
no children - get involved in running a whorehouse? "The roots go back to
the US," she says. "I'd been reading about foreign immigrants - or maybe
emigrants - to Israel, and became interested in some of the legal issues
involved. I packed up and made aliya but once here in Israel, I floundered.
First, I was swept off my feet by a handsome Israeli guy, but the marriage
was a disaster. Then I was having trouble with Hebrew, so I finally took
a job as an English secretary. To practice law, you need both verbal and
the non-verbal language, and I was struggling."
She studied hard and finally qualified for legal practice
in Israel. "I was practicing law and teaching at one of the universities.
There was a prison nearby - it's now closed - where someone I knew was
incarcerated. He'd gotten involved in a real mess and because I had a legal
license, I was able to visit him more often than other friends. I'd go visit,
and while I was there, I met a lot of other people who were in prison. It
occurred to me that working with some of them might be a whole lot more
interesting than what I was doing."
On one visit, Sharon saw something she'd assumed didn't
exist anymore. "There were a number of people walking around rather freely.
They didn't look like either prisoners or criminals, but they certainly weren't
guards. Then I found out. Do you know Israel still has debtor's prisons?
People who can't pay their debts are jailed. And because the courts tend
to set the size of repayments according to the size of the debt - not the
size of the income - they end up in jail repeatedly, and obviously lose any
job they'd had. It also dragged in good-hearted people who'd co-signed loans
for others. Needless to say, most of these prisoners were way beyond broke,
and basically none of them had lawyers to protect their interests. I decided
that even though I wasn't really proficient in Hebrew, whatever I could do
was better than nothing, so I began volunteering to represent debtors. Then
came other clients, all sorts of crimes, including prostitutes. That was
the beginning."
Practicing criminal law carries a stigma all its own.
"It makes me laugh," she says with a giggle. "In my law school, no one would
have admitted to even thinking of practicing criminal law - that's worse
than ambulance chasing. But there I was, enjoying it."
Then the opportunity to be a Madam arose. "One of the
people I met was a police informant, a really bright guy," she says. "He
was trusted by both the criminals and the police. So one day he came to me
and said he needed to open and run a whorehouse in an attempt to catch some
of the people involved in the infamous 'trafficking in women' trade. Would
I consider being the Madam for the sting operation?
"I jumped at the chance. I'd represented a number of
prostitutes, and liked the idea of being able to help the women. I
agreed."
Sharon declined to comment on any of the legal issues
that evolved from the sting operation, except that the suspects were indeed
indicted with 'trafficking in women.' In any event, she added, she wasn't
involved. Her 'partner' was the one involved with the legal issues, and her
involvement was limited to running the brothel.
The whorehouse was located in a low-rent district,
in a four-bedroom apartment that had previously served as a house of ill
repute. "My partner set the whole thing up. He knew prostitutes, and put
the word out. He had no trouble finding the women to work - they were all
prostitutes already. We didn't corrupt anyone."
Most of the women were here illegally from Eastern
Europe. "They came from Romania, Kazakhstan and Russia, smuggled in over
the Egyptian border, although a few may have had tourist visas. The main
point to understand is, these women knew very well why they were coming to
Israel. If they didn't exactly relish the work, for them it was a chance
to earn pretty good money. On the whole, they'd do a lot better as prostitutes
in Israel than they'd do at any job they could get in their home countries.
One woman called both her mother and sister in Romania frequently, every
time encouraging them both to come to work in prostitution. Compared to life
there, they did well in Israel."
There was no compulsion, she notes. "They could leave,
get out of the business, anytime they wanted. That wasn't a problem. One
woman I really liked had worked in Holland as a prostitute, was imprisoned
in Turkey for prostitution, and now was here. Every week, either my partner
or I would go with her to the bank where she bought money orders to send
to her family in Romania. Both her parents were disabled, and she was their
sole support. Another woman had been a literature professor at a university
in Russia - she couldn't get a job. Another was very elegant, extremely well
dressed. She came because she could make a better living as a prostitute
here than there."
Most didn't resemble either Miss Kitty or Pretty Woman's
Julia Roberts. "There's a legion of myths about prostitutes. Ours had Russian
names - Tanya, Alisa, Nadya. Most were in their 20s and moderately attractive.
Many were overweight, a few even obese. When I was a kid, my mother used
to tell me that all prostitutes were lesbians and drug addicts, but that's
not true. Many had boyfriends or husbands, and several had children. Only
one was a drug addict - many used ecstasy, but only one was addicted and
I tried to get her into treatment. A few had problems with alcohol. They
were all heavy smokers. Most of the men smoked too, and sometimes the air
was blue with smoke."
It wasn't Matt Dillon or Richard Gere who came calling,
either. "We were in a low-rent district - no high-fliers. Our clients were
people from the neighborhood - cab drivers, truck drivers, men who worked
in the shuk. Lots of Arabs. In the mornings, we'd get men who worked at
night."
Sharon ran the whorehouse like a sorority. "The girls
could live there if they wanted. Or they could just come in when they wanted
to work. There was a kitchen, and we supplied food, medical care and abortions
if needed. I arranged for anonymous HIV testing for them, but only one woman
went - I think many of them lived in denial - the 'I always use a condom
except with my boyfriend' kind of thing. The girls were supposed to do the
cleaning but they didn't, so we had a woman come in occasionally. I answered
the phone. We advertised in the newspaper as an 'escort service,' but we'd
never have let the girls go out because then we couldn't protect them."
A typical day began in late morning. "I'd come in at
about 11:00 a.m. The girls would come in when they wished. Some men would
call first and I'd kind of flirt on the phone - which was fun. If they wanted
something special - a woman who didn't shave, or two women, or wanted some
unusual act - then I'd ask the girls who were there if anyone was interested
in accommodating the man. They didn't have to. They could work as much as
they wanted, perform whatever acts they wanted, refuse anyone they wished.
It's hard to say how many clients each would see in a day, but maybe 10 is
average. We insisted they use condoms, but didn't check to see if they did.
In terms of cost, Haifa is more expensive than Eilat or Tel Aviv - which
might indicate that there are fewer prostitutes in Haifa. We charged NIS
100 for the first 10 minutes, then more for 15 minutes or 20. The price went
down with more time -an hour wasn't NIS 200, for example."
"Basically it was very low key. The girls would hear
the knock on the door, and the man would come into the living room. If a
girl felt like it, she'd come out. Many of the men were regulars, so they
knew the women. They sit and talk awhile, relax. It was a very friendly place.
Then, at some point, the mood would arise, and they'd go off with one of
the women. She'd take him into her bedroom, they'd agree on how much time,
and what services. The man would pay the girl, and she'd bring the money
out to me, and tell me how much time. It was safer for me to hold the money
- all cash, no credit cards. Then she'd go back to the room. If they hadn't
come out when time was up, I'd knock on the door. Then the man would come
out, he could shower if he wished, and the woman could shower. Then she could
decide if she wanted to appear for the next client. At the end of the day,
we'd settle up with the girls, who got half - so if it was NIS 100, she'd
get 50, and I'd pay the VAT and all other expenses out of my NIS 50. I doubt
all whorehouses operate like that. We lost money during my term. But we paid
taxes - if we hadn't, we might have been okay."
The women were free to negotiate side deals as well.
"If a girl could get more than NIS 100 for her work, either for extra services
or a tip, that was perfectly okay. If the agreement was for 10 minutes, then
all I wanted was my NIS 50. If they could earn a good tip, good for
them."
Attire was up to the women, too. "They didn't wear
anything very much different than what you see on the streets, nowadays.
Sometimes a dress or skirt that was too low or too short, or too-tight pants.
They were advertising the merchandise, after all. Sometimes in the living
room they'd sit on a guy's lap, encourage him a little."
Was there security? A guard at the door? "No - which
probably contributed to the fact that we didn't need it. There's a lot of
testosterone in this business. If we'd had a big guard standing at the door,
we might have had more problems than we did. The truth is, most men are reluctant
to beat up a woman - and besides, they tend to value what they're paying
for. I was the only guard there, but it worked - I have a big mouth. I honestly
think I could be tougher than a man could, and get away with it. We never
had fights, never a stabbing. Before I came, there was a death in that whorehouse
- a man who'd taken viagra had a heart attack."
Frightening moments did occur. "One time a really enormous
guy came. He insisted that because he knew someone, he should be able to
see one of the women for free. I said no, I wasn't willing to waive my share,
and I wasn't going to ask a woman to waive hers. He started to threaten me,
became really unpleasant, but I just stood up to him, defied him, dared him
to do something, and he backed down. He didn't touch me."
A couple of times the police came. "One time the police
were called in by someone - I'm not sure who - but they said illegal women
were working as prostitutes, which was true, of course. So the police arrived
and one man decided to stand guard at the door, to prevent the women from
escaping. That was bad - the police took all the women downtown for questioning.
My partner finally got it all worked out, and everyone was released. At the
time, the women didn't know we were running an undercover operation - all
they knew was that we had a really excellent relationship with the police.
Later on, they knew because some of them testified in the court cases."
There were some awkward incidents, too. "A couple of
times, I'd open the door and find a man I knew standing there - maybe a former
client. That was awkward. One time, on a totally unrelated case, I went into
a different division of the police department to copy a file, and the woman
who worked there, with whom I'd had a very nice relationship before, was
very hostile to me. I asked her what the problem was. She said, 'I didn't
know you were running a whorehouse!' I couldn't tell her - we had to keep
it absolutely undercover. Another time at my home, I needed to hire a
handyman.
One guy came over, but when he saw me, he refused to
do the work. 'I know you - you run a whorehouse! I'm not going to take blood
money from you!'"
In the neighborhood itself, people were generally friendly.
"Some of the local business owners knew what we were doing, and had no problem
with it at all. One day we ran out of condoms. My partner usually bought
supplies, but that day, I had to go. I went to the shuk and walked around
asking, 'Do you sell condoms?' and finally found a guy who did. I told him
I wanted a whole box - like 50 condoms. He gave them to me, then said,'Do
you mind if I ask?' and made some remark about my age. So I said, "They're
not for me. I'm running a whorehouse.' He was just staggered. Then he gave
me a big smile and a thumbs-up. He wrote down our phone number and said he'd
spread the word."
The operation ended when the apartment building, which
had been in foreclosure, was vacated.
"Most likely the women went on to work elsewhere,"
Sharon says. "Some may have been sent home, others may have gone back
voluntarily, if they'd earned what they set out to earn. Others, I don't
know. It's not a business without risks."
In retrospect, how bad is the life of a prostitute?
"On the whole, it's probably more pleasant than doing drudge work in a factory,
standing on your feet all day. For many, it's better than working in one
of the chemical plants. Look at some of the places where people work in Haifa
- terrible conditions, fumes, caustic substances, hard work, long hours,
low pay. Many women would rather be prostitutes. One thing is for sure: I
won't sit in judgment on women who made this choice - their biggest mistake
was not being smart enough to choose parents like mine, who saw to it that
I had every advantage."
Would you do it again? "You bet," Sharon says with
a grin. "In a heartbeat. It was fascinating."
